Monthly Archives: January 2014

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Red-light camera signs: make ’em bigger

Let’s visit the issue of red-light cameras once more. An idea from a long-time acquaintance is worth sharing.

This acquaintance is a retired West Texas A&M University professor who says he supports the red-light cameras positioned at intersections throughout Amarillo. He recently got popped by one of them for scooting through an intersection; the camera snapped a picture of the license plate on his car — which he was driving — and he paid the fine.

No problem with that, he said.

But then he offered this interesting caveat. If the city is sincere in its contention that the cameras are not intended strictly as a revenue source, why not make them more visible?

Hmmm. Why not, indeed?

My pal noted that the signs are difficult to spot when you’re concentrating on traffic moving in two directions on a busy street. State law requires cities to position the signs at least 300 feet from the intersection where the camera is deployed. I’ll have to admit that I don’t usually notice the signs either along the streets on which I drive frequently.

I’ve been fortunate, though, in that I haven’t been ticketed for running a red light. I darn sure won’t burst through the intersection after coming to a complete stop.

I don’t believe state law stipulates that the signs must be a certain size.

So, if the city’s declaration that the cameras are intended to make driving safer in Amarillo, is there anything that prohibits the city from making the signs a bit larger, a bit gaudier, more noticeable to the average driver?

I continue to strongly support red-light cameras as a traffic-enforcement tool. The revenue aspect is negated somewhat by state law that requires the city to spend money only on traffic improvement. The jury is still out as to whether they’re reducing the number of accidents caused by motorists running through red lights.

Perhaps larger signage would help. Any thoughts on that?

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New year brings old argument over jobless insurance

Dear U.S. Senators:

Good morning and happy new year. Welcome back to the same ol’ same ol’ fights among yourselves and with the White House. The issue today is unemployment insurance.

First, a question: Will you do the right thing and extend unemployment insurance for long-term unemployed Americans for another three months?

If you do, you will make about 1.3 million Americans quite happy as they continue to find work in an economy that is recovering, but is in a still-fragile state of recovery. If you do not, then you will incur their wrath at the next election.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/01/07/showdown_set_on_unemployment_bill_in_senate_121150.html

And that election, by the way, is coming up this year for about one-third of you. Every single seat in the House of Representatives is up for election, so your friends on the other end of the Capitol Building have their own concerns about this bill.

I hope some of you heard Gene Sperling, one of President Obama’s economic advisers, this weekend on “Meet the Press.” Sperling made a critical point about this extension, which was that during President Bush’s two terms in office immediately preceding Barack Obama’s time there, Congress approved the jobless insurance extension five times without adding “pay for” provisions to them.

The country’s debt load was heavy then as well, in case you don’t recall. Now, however, some of you — chiefly Republicans — say they would approve extending the benefits only if Congress can come up with spending cuts to pay for them. Why now? Why not when President Bush was asking for the extension? This kind of heartlessness reminds me of when, in 2011, some of your House colleagues said the same thing about providing emergency relief for victims of the killer tornado that tore Joplin, Mo., apart.

Let’s not play that game now, ladies and gentlemen. Americans out here are suffering. They need some assistance while they keep looking for work.

Are you on their side or aren’t you?

Get busy. Do the right thing.

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Harding and Packwood: quite a duo

My hometown newspaper, the (Portland) Oregonian, is taking a look back at one of modern sports’ seedier events: the whacking of Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan’s knee by thugs hired by her rival Tonya Harding’s former husband.

http://www.oregonlive.com/tonya-harding/#incart_big-photo

Why the interest in Portland? Harding’s a hometown girl, born and reared in Portland. She’s my homey. I grew up there, too. She makes me proud, yes? No.

I noted yesterday that 20 years ago I would answer questions about where I grew up by saying, “Portland, Oregon, hometown of Tonya Harding and Bob Packwood.”

Harding got into trouble over the Kerrigan knee-bashing. She ended up getting stripped of her world figure skating title. Her troubles made international headlines. She became a disgrace.

And then we had Sen. Packwood, who got into trouble about the same time.

I’ll talk just a bit about Packwood here.

He was a brilliant guy. He was part of a potent U.S. Senate tandem with fellow Republican Mark Hatfield. They sat on important committees and looked after Oregon interests in the Senate.

Then his career began to unravel in 1992. He got caught making unwanted sexual advances on female staffers, who filed complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee. He would resign in 1995, but not after he, too, embarrassed those who had watched him come of political age in Oregon.

He defeated one of the Senate’s true lions, Wayne Morse, in 1968. Morse had the distinction of being one of precisely two senators — the other being Ernest Gruening of Alaska — to vote “no” on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964. Packwood would win re-election in 1974; Morse, by the way, was the Democratic nominee that year, but died shortly after the primary, leaving it up to the state Democratic Party to select a replacement candidate.

I met Packwood in 1980 while working for a small suburban daily paper in Oregon City. He was an impressive fellow, quick-witted, razor sharp, glib, articulate, intelligent and a guy with such a rapid-fire delivery I had difficulty taking notes.

But he turned out to be a disgrace long after I left Oregon for Texas.

It’s still intriguing to me, though, to look back on those days and remember how my then-fairly placid hometown could produce such widely disparate scoundrels.

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Fox talk-show hosts need lesson in field reporting

Talking heads, by definition, are personalities who, well, talk.

They opine on matters, regardless of their expertise — or lack thereof — on the subject.

Such appears to be the case when “Fox and Friends” co-hosts decided to criticize a New York Times reporter who was on the ground in Benghazi, Libya, when terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate on Sept. 11, 2012 and ignited a fire fight that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/02/war-reporters-fox-criticism-of-times-benghazi-r/197394

The Times published a lengthy report that dissected the events of that terrible day and reported that an anti-Islam video that had been posted on YouTube played a part in triggering the siege. Fox pundits have been claiming for more than a year that the video had nothing to do with the event and have declared that the Obama administration has been covering up the facts of the case.

Now comes the Fox and Friends clowns who say that reporters in the field should have alerted U.S. authorities that Americans might have been in danger.

How would they have done that? Steve Doocy, one of the Fox hosts, said the reporter “probably” had access to a satellite phone he could have used to call for help. Probably?

Therein lies the difficulty in trying to offer opinions and analysis on things of which you have no knowledge.

A reporter’s job is to report events in real time. “When you’re in the middle of a riot or an attack like that, first of all, it is not a reporter’s job to call the authorities and he would have to assume the authorities know about it. It seems so bizarre,” said Josh Meyer, director of education and outreach for the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative and a former Los Angeles Times national security reporter with experience in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The Fox talking heads should stick to things with which they are comfortable, which is criticizing Obama administration policy. They should steer clear of discussing reporter’s responsibilities covering hostile action in a war zone.

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Winter chill vs. climate change

Here come the deniers, the folks who take every opportunity to deny what science has declared to be fact, that Earth’s climate is changing.

Much of the nation is locked in a deep freeze. Hey, it’s winter. It happens every year at the time. Correct?

Dear Donald Trump: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

The Texas Panhandle is no different in that regard. Some of our locals like to brag about how cold it gets every winter. The wind howls and we joke about having to string another length of barbed wire to keep the wind from blowing in from the Arctic.

Of course, this time of year brings out those who keep insisting the planet’s climate isn’t changing. Well, it is.

The debate, as I’ve tried to note all along, isn’t whether the climate is changing. The debate ought to center on its cause. Manmade or natural?

I’m not smart enough to make that determination myself. I try to leave it to scientists who’ve spent many lifetimes studying these things. Many of them say human beings have caused the climate to change by (a) emitting carbon dioxide into the air and (b) laying waste to hundreds of millions of acres of forestland populated by trees that replace the CO2 with oxygen. Others say the climate change is part of the epochal cycle the planet experiences every few million years — and that we’re entering the next cycle.

I tend to believe the human factor is the cause.

I’ll repeat something my dear late mother used to say about those who cannot see the big picture, that they’re “so narrow-minded they can look through a keyhole with both eyes.”

Look at the big picture, folks.

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Liz Cheney ends her Senate campaign

Liz Cheney isn’t as obsessed with political power as some of us thought, apparently.

The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Wyoming ended her campaign early today, citing undisclosed family health issues. I wish her and her family well, of course.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/liz-cheney-wyoming-senate-race-101767.html?hp=f1

Another part of me, though, is glad she’s bowing out, if only to restore some sanity to the political process in one of our 50 states.

Cheney is the outspoken daughter of the outspoken former vice president, Dick Cheney. She challenged long-time Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi for reasons that continue to escape me. She claimed, I guess, that Enzi — one of the Senate’s most conservative members — isn’t conservative enough.

Her candidacy drew immediate fire from the state’s GOP establishment. GOP powerhouses lined up in Enzi’s corner.

Then things turned bad.

Cheney was accused of being a carpetbagger, given that she moved to Wyoming in 2010 after growing up in Washington, D.C. I don’t hold that against her. Two of my favorite carpetbaggers have been Robert F. Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both of whom represented New York quite nicely in the Senate. In this age of intense media scrutiny, though, Cheney’s opportunism was drawing unusual attention.

Of course, then we had Cheney getting into that public tiff with her openly gay sister, Mary, over the issue of same-sex marriage. Mary is married and is a mother. Liz opposes gay marriage. The sisters got into a spat that only served to embarrass the entire family.

As Politico.com notes, Cheney’s campaign never got “traction.” Enzi continued to poll far ahead of his upstart challenger.

What this means for the health of the national Republican Party, though, remains to be determined. Liz Cheney is just one challenger to establishment GOP incumbents to drop out. Other insurgents are out there, including a few throughout West Texas, who are mounting challenges to long-time Republican incumbents.

Liz Cheney, though, is out of the game. Good. Her voice, though, won’t be silenced. She’s got her Fox News Channel job waiting for her.

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Harris-Perry issues real apology

There are non-apology apologies. You know them when you hear them.

They’re the statements where the individual seeking to atone for a mistake says this:

“If I offended anyone, then I am sorry for those remarks.”

The implication, of course, is that the individual isn’t apologizing to those he or she did not offend.

The reverse of that are the real apologies, those heart-felt mea culpas that come from deep within, from the heart, or the gut. That’s what I heard Saturday from Melissa Harris-Perry, the MSNBC talk show host who took part in a discussion that got way out of hand.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/01/04/nr-msnbc-host-apology.cnn.html

The discussion was a year-end review of political events of 2013. Harris-Perry flashed a picture of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, with their grandchildren. One of the kids is an African-American infant adopted by one of the Romneys’ five sons and his wife. The panel went to great lengths over the next few moments to poke fun at the Romneys and singled out little Kieran Romney for ridicule. They were trying to make some ridiculous statement about Republicans’ outreach to the minority citizens.

The response from many circles, not just from conservatives, was ferocious. Harris-Perry was called down correctly by many pundits across the nation for the tastelessness of the segment.

She acknowledged it — all of it — Saturday morning while issuing an apology that turned tearful. And yes, the emotion sure looked real to me.

Harris-Perry did the honorable thing by going on the air to apologize. It’s been said, of course, that the more honorable thing would have been to refrain from saying those disgraceful things in the first place.

Well, we’re all human. We’re all fallible. She made a mistake. She apologized for it in its entirety without qualification.

As for Gov. Romney, he has accepted her apology and wants to move on, as he said this morning on Fox News Sunday. If it’s good enough for Mitt Romney, it’s good enough for me.

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Dick Metcalf: gun control poster boy

Dick Metcalf has become a poster boy on two distinct levels.

His dismissal as a columnist for Guns & Ammo magazine tells the nation about the power of hysterical opposition to any form of debate over gun control and about how a respected journalist can be shot in the back — so to speak — by his editors.

Metcalf has dedicated his life to the support of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to “keep and bear arms.” He’s written for Guns & Ammo for many years, becoming arguably the nation’s pre-eminent columnist on gun ownership.

Well, recently he wrote a column in the magazine that suggests that none of the Bill of Rights should be above some form of regulation. That includes the Second Amendment, Metcalf wrote.

“The fact is,” wrote Metcalf, “all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.”

Did he suggest a watering down of gun owner rights? No. Did he suggest a disarming of Americans? No.
He merely said the Second Amendment should not be placed on another level apart from the other Bill of Rights amendments to the Constitution.

The reaction was ferocious, according to the New York Times. Gun manufacturers threatened to pull advertising; subscriptions were cancelled; editors were harassed, harangued and hassled over the publication of a column — which the editors themselves approved prior to its publication. More on that in a moment.

The power of a gun lobby has been seen in the halls of government power, from statehouses, county courthouses, city halls and to Capitol Hill. Don’t mess with anything that even smacks of regulation, no matter how reasonable or minor it might be, the lobbyists warn. Lawmakers listen to them and back down immediately.

By my reckoning, though, perhaps the greater sin was committed by Metcalf’s editors at Guns & Ammo.

They read his column. I must presume, given that they’re professional journalists who work for a prestigious publication, that they discussed the meaning of the column and its possible impact. If they did, then perhaps they agreed to take the heat they knew would be turned up.

So, they published the writer’s work. Then the crap hit the fan. The editors’ response? It was to turn tail and run.

They dismissed the columnist because of their own journalistic cowardice.

Metcalf became their scapegoat.

I guess I could have predicted that anything smacking of reasonable discourse relating to gun regulation would fall on deaf ears among that segment of the population that adheres to the no-compromise notion of gun ownership.

What one could not predict would be that a respected columnist’s editors would commit an act of journalistic betrayal.

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Obama takes necessary step on weapons checks

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President Obama knows that Congress will tie itself up in knots arguing over taking an action supported by most Americans.

So he’s taking executive action to do the right thing by tightening background check requirements on individuals seeking to purchase a firearm.

Wait for it. The shills on the right are going to start yammering any day now that the president is seeking to “disarm law-abiding Americans” by denying them their “constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

What utter horse dookey.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/03/obama-executive-action-guns_n_4537752.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

One change clarifies the definition of someone who has been “involuntary” committed to outpatient or inpatient treatment for mental disease. Another change allows the submission of information about individuals seeking to purchase a firearm, but doesn’t prohibit someone from buying a firearm if he or she has undergone treatment.

None of this is ham-handed. Nor does it do a single thing to prohibit any reasonable individual from buying a firearm. It seeks to clarify some confusing language in existing federal law.

However, these kinds of actions usually produce a firestorm of criticism from those who believe any reasonable restriction or effort to keep guns out of the hands of individuals who shouldn’t own them as an infringement on everyone’s rights.

Those folks are in the minority in this country. Most Americans support stricter background checks that would not inhibit their rights under the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

If our elected representatives won’t do the right thing, then it falls on our elected head of state and government — the president of the United States — to step up.

Go for it, Mr. President.

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You got change for a Bitcoin?

Bitcoins have become a form of currency that some of us — myself included — need to understand.

As of this moment, I don’t quite get it.

That makes the decision by Republican U.S. senatorial candidate Steve Stockman to accept campaign contributions in this manner all the more bizarre — as if Stockman himself isn’t bizarre enough.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/01/03/stockman-enters-legal-grey-area-bitcoin-donations/

It’s called “virtual currency,” kind of like virtual video games. You pay it by swiping some computer image across a scanner that records the amount and logs it into a data base. The Texas Tribune reports that Stockman told Business Insider that he would accept contributions in this form and then confirmed it on Twitter and Facebook.

Stockman’s candidacy against incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is a long shot to begin with. He’s challenging the senior senator in the Republican primary this March. His chances of winning are slim and none, but it’s the slim part that worries many of us, given Stockman’s proclivity for goofy statements oddball policy stances.

The Tribune notes correctly that Stockman has flouted campaign finance laws already. He fired staffers and has faced questions about how money moves around his campaign coffers.

The Bitcoin makes it easier for contributors to give anonymously, so one might be unable to judge the motives behind the contribution.

Stockman calls the digital currency issue a matter of “freedom.” I prefer to think that accountability ought to matter as well.

If you give to a candidate, put your name on it, own up to it … for the record. Then let others determine whose interests are being served.